Hmm. I would give him the stats for another Chapter. There's no point in being an Alpha Legionnaire without a cover identity, and they go to extreme lengths to do so. Alternatively; +5 Int, +5 Fel, trained in Demolitions and Deceive…

Gurkhal said:

This, of course, assumes you're running the Imperial Truth as canon backplot, which you might not be (I've been playing 40K since *long* before Horus Heresy novels were published) but even assuming you are, I'm not sure this makes a difference. The Imperial Truth isn't so much a mystery as a retcon - if the traitor legions knew about it, then the loyalist marines also knew about it, and there's no reason they would have forgotten just because ten thousand years had passed. The reason it's not a big part of the "present day" Imperium is that the whole concept is something Dan Abnett made up long after the setting was already established.

It's also worth pointing out that, as I understand it, Space Marines don't follow the Imperial Creed anyway, they follow their Chapter traditions, none of which have actually changed very much in the past hundred centuries. Nothing about the Imperial Truth tells the Blood Angels to stop having visions of Sanguinius, or the Imperial Fists to stop using the Pain Glove, or the Space Wolves to stop getting drunk and brawling.

The mystery about them, their motives and organization. The whole thing about the Alpha Legion is that they are supposed, at least to my understanding, to be mysterious but a member like that would have some pretty juicy inside information on the issue. Granted alot would have changed but it would still break a little of the mystery.

And no, I don't particular like the idea of the Alpha Legion as naive dimwits tricked by a bunch of xenos just like that. I like my Alpha Legion to be as devoted to Chaos and the destruction to the Imperium as the Black Legion or Iron Warriors.

The Alpha Legion are supposed to be mysterious, but so are half the loyalist chapters. Banning a player from playing a member of the Alpha Legion because you don't want the players to know how the Alpha Legion is organized seems strange to me, sort of the equivalent of banning a player from playing a Dark Angel because you don't want the players to know about the Fallen.

No, it wasn't. But the Primarchs were still around and since the Legions were split up odds are that the Marine would have met people who had spent time or at least seen the Primarchs in real life. Thus reasonably the Marine would have alot more and accurate info about the Primarchs than any present person could ever hope to get hold of.

I'm not sure that's true. The Space Marine Legions were huge, and the Primarchs were widely dispersed throughout the galaxy. Yes, your character might have met a Primarch, or met somebody who had somebody who had met a Primarch, but at least according to basic canon, the Primarchs really *are* pretty much the way they're remembered, so the character's information will be no better than anybody else's. Unless you're running a setting in which - say - Rogal Dorn was a tremendous physical coward who built really sloppy fortifications and hated the idea of pain, *and the entire Alpha Legion knew it* your Great Crusade veteran isn't going to know any more about most Primarchs than the other PCs.

I disagree. The basic story and the most important events, like the Istvaan Massacre or the Siege of the Imperial Palace are most likely known. But I'm talking about details beyond that which the Marine is likley to have some knowledge about, same with the Great Crusade. Maybe not all but at least enough to rival the most well informed present individual. The Alpha Legion was after all, as I've understood it, not known for keeping information from their own members.

I think you're overvaluing first-hand information.

A character who fought in the Great Crusade would know what it was *like* to fight in the Great Crusade but they're likely to be significantly less well informed about the period as a whole than a "present day" historian. Imagine if you took - say - a Norman knight from the Battle of Hastings and transported them into the present day. Even if you ignore the language barrier, do you really think they'd know any better than we do who Edward the Confessor really wanted to become king after his death, or how Harold Godwinson died, or whether Robert the Magnificant had been involved in the death of his brother?

History is messy when you're living through it.

Basically I'd suggest that an Alpha Legion PC would know enough about the Horus Heresy for them to be able to justify buying the Forbidden Lore (Horus Heresy) skill, but not a lot more than that.